McConnell"s Legislative Activism - Changing President's Term To Three Years

From the New Yorker:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a television appearance on Sunday, the leading Senate Republican warned President Obama “in no uncertain terms” against doing anything in his remaining three hundred and forty days in office. “The President should be aware that, for all intents and purposes, his term in office is already over,” Mitch McConnell said on Fox News. “It’s not the time to start doing things when you have a mere eight thousand one hundred and sixty hours left.”

McConnell continues to astound me.  He's concerned, among many things, about the president nominating a successor to Scalia, a constitutional 'originalist.'  Let's look, Mitch, at what the constitution's Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 says about the president's term of office:

"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows" [emphasis added].

Sounds like a little legislative activism to try to cut the president's term to three years.

But consider the source.  Here's McConnell back in December 2010:

"Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term."

His job the last five years has been to obstruct the operations of the United States of America.  This seems to be the key plank of the Republican Party's platform.

Well, even with two years to do it, McConnell couldn't deny Obama that second term, and now it seems his top priority is to deny President Obama the fourth year of that term.  The constitution be damned.

Babies are conceived and born in less than a year.  Ask any mother how long just nine months is.

Relax

I was going to explain this picture.  But why?  Just absorb its quiet, relaxing tones.

Driftwood

Yesterday we got in some beach time before it started raining again.  We did then go across to the Bainbridge Island Japanese Exclusion Memorial as the rain began.  I thought I'd posted about this memorial before but I can't find such a post.  It's very powerful, reminding us about the dangers and injustices of condemning whole groups of people.

From the beach walk, here are some images of the driftwood someone little walked across.

[This post and the last had  Feedburner problem again. So I'm reposting.]

Writing Honestly About The Death Of A Famous Person

Antonin Scalia has died.  When someone dies who has, in your view of the world, been a force that has made rich people richer, poor people poorer, and inflicted unnecessary suffering on many human beings, how does one respond? 

Edward Snowden retweeted a Glenn Greenwald article about how people should react when Margaret Thatcher died a couple of years ago - conservatives saying to be respectful of the family yet predicting things like,

"Former Tory MP Louise Mensch, with no apparent sense of irony, invoked precepts of propriety to announce: Pygmies of the left so predictably embarrassing yourselves, know this: not a one of your leaders will ever be globally mourned like her."

He points out that while the conservatives wanted liberals to be respectful and not criticize Thatcher immediately following her death, they didn't follow the same rules themselves.

"Tellingly, few people have trouble understanding the need for balanced commentary when the political leaders disliked by the west pass away. Here, for instance, was what the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez:

 'To the millions who detested him as a thug and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.'"

Greenwald also points out a political, and what I'd call a 'ways of knowing' reason, not to hold off on the problematic aspects of someone's life - it biases the public record and people's emotional record of the person who died.

"[T]hose who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms."

Hagiography is on my long list of favorite words and I'm always surprised at how few people know what it means.  Most people at least recognize that the Greek 'graph' has to do with writing (biography, autograph, telegraph) but not hagio which is holy.  Technically, hagiography is the writing of the lives of saints.  but it's also taken on the meaning that Wikipedia describes:

"the term hagiography is often used as a pejorative reference to biographies and histories whose authors are perceived to be uncritical or reverential to their subject."

But I think the problem is not all that difficult.  The key is to write a factual account of someone's life that includes both the positive and the negative.  Very few public figures are simplistically good or evil.  We have the charming fools and we have the arrogant, but effective figures, and many other variations of meshed characteristics.  

David G. Savage seems to have walked the tightrope in his overview of Scalia's life, highlighting the complexity of his subject.

Recognizing that he and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were close friends, gives me pause about my general sense of Scalia voiced above.  I think his basic ideology is wrong, but he was a bright man, so I need to think through this and check up a bit on both originalism and the decisions he supported.  I'm pretty sure I'm right, but he knew he was.  Maybe that's my advantage over him.

Gramping Cramping Blogging

My granddaughter and I made oatmeal.  We ate strawberries.   We did some juggling.  Lots of giggling. We even made a video and used the slow motion to see better how to throw and catch the juggling balls.  She's working on juggling one ball right now.  We Walked, ran, hopped, skipped, sashayed, and piggybacked to the paper store.  Where we met J.


I'm not allowed to post images of her (not a bad rule in the age of face recognition and massive data gathering and sharing).  If I did, you'd all melt and understand my affliction.    So, I have to find other ways to convey how much fun we have together.










It's really wonderful to have someone else who is willing to spend so much time looking at cracks in the sidewalk, feeling the bark on the trees,  and examining and touching and smelling the camellias.

I'd note there was one area with a bunch of camellias bushes, but only one bush was blooming.

She also pondered with me the flies that seemed to be taking advantage of the sunshine that broke up the days of Seattle area rains.

We could feel and hear the wind.  We couldn't actually see it, but we could see the branches and her curls moving in the wind.  And I only consciously considered  today the fact that we can feel with more of our body than we can hear or see or taste or smell.  And my sunshine first touched the edges of the camellia leaves with her fingers, but then tried it on her forehead, and it worked there too.  She's so lost in concentration, and then she giggles.

And we've been watching the daffodil buds for the last few days and I've been predicting they would open soon.  And here's the first one we saw.  We had to look and touch and smell.





Later, after I wrote a long overdue letter on one of the cards I bought, then put a photo on the cover, we walked down to the post office.  $1.20 to Japan. The clerk pulled out a beautiful swallowtail butterfly stamp - $.71.  I wondered out loud what you could do with a $.71 stamp and she said they had stamps of all sorts of amounts.  She added a $.39 stamp.  Then to the market next door because someone wanted some strawberries.  Then off to another nearby park where there was lots of time on the slides and swings and other interesting ways to climb and move.

Finally, she climbed back into the stroller, clipped herself into the safety harness, put on her gloves, and we started home.  She stayed awake about 3/4 of a mile.  Then just as we got almost home her neck muscles relaxed and her head nodded down.


You'd think I could gramp and blog.  But blogging requires time to think, time to write, time to reconsider.  Gramping requires paying attention to a little human, not to the computer screen.   She's pulled my fingers away from the keyboard and closed the laptop a few times and closed my book while I was reading so we could explore together.   And I know that before too long, she'll have lots of friends and other things to do, and she won't have time to spend all day with grandpa.

Fond Memories of Rep. Max Gruenberg

I was saddened to hear just now that Rep. Max Gruenberg died this morning.  He had invited me to come to Juneau after I retired to become a 'scholar in residence.'  His idea was to both get legislative advice from the scholar as well as hoping the scholar would write about what he saw.   He said at the time I could work out of his office - as a volunteer - and pursue whatever interested me.  He wanted to set up a program that would support a scholar in residence at the legislature to record what happens in the capitol in a more academic way.  I was caught up with other things for a couple of sessions but I finally accepted his offer for the 2010 session.

Max Gruenberg (r) with staffers and Anchorage Transportation Chief in 2010

By then I was an active blogger and asked that we set up some ground rules for my blogging from Juneau.  Max, who still dictated memos and letters, really didn't know what a blog was, but I showed him a couple of posts - including the one I did when he and I went to talk to Joyce Anderson in the ethics office - and he said that was fine.

Signs of trouble began right away when he was told I couldn't have an email account and they got worse when communications from Nancy Dahlstrom, chair of the rules committee, were telling Max that he couldn't have a volunteer staffer.  Max was getting legal opinions from the legislative legal office saying he could.  But while Max, an attorney, was arguing law, Dahlstrom was arguing power and eventually I was in a meeting in the Minority Chair's office where I got lots of apologies, but I wouldn't be able to be a volunteer staffer for Max.  By then I'd been learning a lot - mainly from people responding when I said I was a staffer for Max.  Things like, "He works his staff harder than anyone else" and "He's known as the Great Amender" because he's always making little fixes to bills.

The whole time in Juneau, Max was always extremely helpful.  He proved, over and over, that his mind was very sharp.  He was at the time, if I recall correctly, the person who had been in the legislature the longest, with a couple term break in service.  He remembered legislative history and how and why things were done.  Sometimes I'd be thinking, Max, leave it be, you're getting too nitpicky, and then it would become clear that he had a very good reason for making the points he was making.

He was a strong defender of justice, of the poor, of people of all backgrounds, of dogs and their owners, and he was a proud Navy veteran.  His invitation to come to Juneau gave me a session long window into the legislature that was stimulating and very enlightening.  While I was waiting to see how the conflict would resolve between Max and Nancy Dahlstrom, I had decided that I would stay in Juneau one way or the other - either as a staffer or as a blogger.   And as I left the meeting where I was told volunteering for Max wasn't going to happen,  Rep. Dahlstrom found me in the stairwell and  assured me that the decision had nothing to do with me personally and she was very supportive of my staying in Juneau to blog.   Nearly all my posts from mid January 2010 to mid April 2010 are about the legislature or Juneau.  Here are the ones tagged Alaska Legislature 2010.  I didn't quite fulfill Max's vision of an academic in residence, but my blog did give a close up view of things happening in Juneau, and a few posts did step back and look at things in a more academic way.

My condolences go out to Kayla Epstein - Max's wife - and the rest of his family.  His solid voice, backed by lots of legislative history and an excellent legal mind, will be sorely missed.

"The road is wedged into the forest like a needle stuck into a ball of yarn."

Sometimes a sentence will jump right out at me. make me stop and think.  This is from a story about coming upon a car that had just hit a moose on a darkening mountain road in Maine in The Sun.  Actually, there are two stories.  The driver and the passenger, both writers coming back from giving readings at a nearby college, both give their own separate accounts of the encounter.  This is from the second one by Sarah Braunstein.

My mother used to knit and I used to hold the yarn on my hands as she would roll it into a ball.  Or I'd roll it.  I can feel the ball of yarn in my hand and see the needle stuck through the winding yarn.  But as I thought about the image more, I wasn't so sure it worked.  The yarn makes a good tight tangle of forest, but a road in such a place wouldn't be straight like the needle, rather it would wind this way and that.  But maybe Maine roads are straighter.

The interview in that edition also caught my attention.  It's with an anthropologist, David Lancy, about child rearing in the West compared the the rest of the world.  I found my self alternately agreeing and disagreeing with Lancy's statements.

His basic argument is that in most cultures in the world, the elders get the attention and are catered to.  In the West it's the kids.  And he doesn't seem to think this is good for how the kids develop.  I remember long ago working in Thailand  being amazed at how much young kids could do - probably best characterized by an image in my head of a five or six year old with a younger sibling hitched to the hip.  And I remember how much freedom I had as a child to wander the neighborhood with other kids.  I walked to school on my own from the first grade through the 12th.  So part of me agrees with Lancy that this loss of freedom and independence is regrettable.

There's much in the interview that will outrage folks as he talks about the subordination of women and female genital mutilation in the context of the whole culture.  He gives some caveats and says he doesn't approve, but not demonstrably enough.  I chalk this up to possibly the limited time he spoke to the interviewer or how the interview was edited.  He just couldn't give all the context.  I also attribute it to an anthropological approach, where he's being descriptive of how things work in a different culture and also evaluating things in terms of that culture.  But it's going to rile people.

Lancy also talks about anthropologists using 'cultural relativism' as a lens, so that they evaluate a culture, not in comparison to other cultures, but in the context of each culture itself.  The opposite of cultural relativism, he says, is ethnocentrism, which most non-anthropologists use.  Ethnocentrists judge other cultures in comparison to their own, which, more often than not, is the best.

And yet, in the end, he's judging Western child rearing as wanting compared to how other cultures rear their kids.

I think perhaps he should have stepped back a bit further and talked more about the context of child rearing in Western societies.  In that context, the child rearing he describes, might actually be appropriate for getting one's kid on a track that will get her into a good university and eventually to a good job.  It's the modernist, rational world that these kids are growing up in that leads to a capitalist society in which money is the most important indicator of status and importance that's the problem.  And where fewer and fewer people are getting richer and richer and more and more are slipping into a barely making category.

It's a provocative piece.  Well worth reading and discussing.


And finally, I just started William Gay's the long home.  In the first two pages I was already struck by three words that I realized I would never write.  Not because I've never heard of them, but because they're in my passive vocabulary, not my active vocabulary.

• sepulcher  ". . . or some great internal storm, flaring the hollows of the world, lightning quaking unseen in sepulchers dark and sleek and damp .  .  ."
• tintinnabulation "He threw his arms about his head and leapt up wildly while rocks were falling on the roof in a rising tintinnabulation . . ."
• languorous "The bespoke him with languorous foreboding . . ."

And Gay offers us wonderful images such as:

". . . aged by the ceaseless traffic of the years . . ."

Again, I had to stop and savor the words, roll them over in my mouth, tasting them, as I consider this idea of 'the ceaseless traffic of the years.'  I saw freeway traffic, years like cars constantly driving past, but it could also refer to the trafficking of goods.

Getting these delicious images within a few hours of each other reminded me how so much writing today is like fast food, easy, but unsubstantial.   And how I need to be more thoughtful in crafting my own prose.

Good Kids

Despite my bad influence most of their lives, my kids have turned out great.*






*Due to their discomfort being spotlighted, I'll just leave it at that.

Initial Thoughts: New Hampshire

What does New Hampshire mean?  You can't ignore 60% of the vote.  

Here are a few thoughts:

1.  Can Sanders (ie a 74 year old, Jewish, self declared democratic socialist) win in November?
2.  If he did win, could he accomplish any of the things he's wants to do?
3.  Would Clinton have done better if she weren't a woman?
4.  What about Kasich?

1.  Can Sanders (ie a 74 year old, self declared democratic socialist, and a Jew) win in November?

Social reality, as opposed to physical reality, is what we decide it is.  Social reality changes over time.  Our understanding of physical reality changes.  Same sex marriage, for example, is now legal.   If enough people decide being a socialist isn't the kiss of death, then it isn't.   Republicans have been calling Obama a socialist all along and they'll do the same with Clinton.

Sanders' advantage is his self labeling.  He's not afraid of the label and he'll stand up and challenge people who use the word as a slur.  I suspect the next year Americans will get schooled in socialism and related concepts.

Can a Jew be elected?  If a black American can be elected, surely being Jewish won't be the factor that prevents someone from becoming president.

Reagan was the oldest person to be elected president in 1980 when he was 69.  You can send Sanders a 75th birthday card on September 8.  But times have changed.  Trump will be 70 on June 14,  and Clinton will be 69 on October 26.  I kind of like the idea of having a president who is older than I am again.

Can he win?  If he's running against Trump?  Only 35% of the Republican voters voted for Trump.  I'd bet that more Clinton voters would back Sanders than Trump voters would support another Republican.  

Republicans are probably smiling at Clinton's loss in New Hampshire.  They've been worrying about running against her.  They've set up all sorts of campaigns to block her - from Benghazi to Lewinsky.  Bernie Sanders would be an easy opponent as far as they're concerned.  But they dismissed Trump too.

2.  If he did win, could he accomplish any of the things he's promising done?

First, promising is not the right word.  He's promoting things like free community college and single payer health plan, but I don't think he's promising them.  Few American presidents can get all the programs they want.  Even one or two major accomplishments is a big deal these days.  

So, no, he's not going to get everything done.  But ideas take a while to germinate, grow, and bear fruit.  Electing a man who strongly champions new ideas, means those ideas will move from the 'pipe-dream' category to the possible, even probable category.  It will be out there and there will be more support.  And they're more likely to eventually take hold.

How much a President Sanders gets done will depend on how his candidacy would affect the congressional elections.  Can he pick up a bunch of Democratic senators?  Getting a majority in the House will be harder, but the size of the Republican majority can be shrunk.  Though gerrymandering after 2010 will slow things down.  While there are no district line drawing for the Senate (since every state gets two Senators), the existing state lines give red states a lot more clout than their population warrants.

3.  Would Clinton have done better if she weren't a woman?

I'm sure that there are people who either consciously or unconsciously react less positively to Clinton the candidate because she's a woman.  Maybe even five or ten percent.  Possibly more.  Women are judged differently than are men.

But I think that it's more about who this particular woman is.  She's supported the economic establishment over the years and the money people have supported her.  Despite her denials, it's hard to imagine that those ties won't impact her decisions.  Now, she could argue that her connections will make it easier to negotiate changes, but I suspect that her past positions including her husband's passing of NAFTA and her more recent support for PPT, make a lot of Democratic voters nervous.

One could just as well ask if she'd be the candidate if she weren't a woman.  Would she be running for president if she hadn't been first lady?  If she hadn't married Bill, would she have had her own political career and gotten to the point she's at?

My sense is that she's just a bit too wonky. She doesn't have the charisma that Bill has.  And charisma - a comfortableness with people, an ability to make others feel comfortable and to make them trust you - plays a big role in presidential elections.  

The heart makes the ultimate decision among candidates.

4.  What about Kasich?

For me, his second place finish among the Republicans was the big surprise.  Will he get some attention now that could move him up in future primaries?  Or will he be pulled back down in Southern states?   

Just some quick thoughts after the primary.  Interesting times.  

Mahomet, Illinois

I don't think I've done a post quite like this one.


Mahomet, Illinois had 7,258 people in the 2010 census.  95.88% were white.  (Down from 97.94% white in the 2000 census.)  It's voter registration is:
Democratic:     505  or 12%
Green:                 4 or 0.10%
Non-Partisan   1,692 or 41%
Republican      1,926 or 46%

I know you're asking yourself some variation of, "What?!!"

Someone from Mahomet, Illinois dropped by this blog and I thought it interesting that an Illinois town had a variation of the Prophet Mohammed's name as the town's name.  Who are these people?
Or was this an Indian name?

So I looked it up.  Originally the town was called Middletown because it was between two larger towns.  But another town already had that name and mail deliveries were getting confused.  So in 1871 they changed it to Mahomet.

From Wikipedia:

The Illinois town's name derives from the "Mahomet Lodge," the local Masonic Lodge at the time the town was searching for a new name. Its use as the name of the lodge was a manifestation of the Freemasons' liberal use of religious names and stonemason tools and symbols."This claim needs references to reliable sources. (April 2009)" An alternative theory states that the name Mahomet was arbitrarily assigned when the conflicting names were noted by the US Postal Service.

[UPDATE 6:20pm: See comments that challenge this account and offer evidence the town was named after Native American Mahomet Weyonomon.  Comments also have interesting info about Mahomet possibly being a sunset town - a town where blacks were not allowed after dark.]

I did look up ethnicities and religion.  I would imagine that Muslims might find a town named after their prophet attractive.  The census data said there were 34 Arabs.  I also found a list of religious participation.  In general, religious participation seems significantly lower than the national average.  And there are double the Muslims than the national average and more Muslims than LDS, Presbyterians, and Jews.

Religion	Mahomet, Illinois	United States
Percent Religious	34%	48.78%
Catholic	7.8%	19.43%
LDS	0.84%	2.03%
Baptist	4.18%	9.30%
Episcopalian	0.45%	0.65%
Pentecostal	4.64%	1.8%
Lutheran	2.96%	2.33%
Methodist	4.51%	3.93%
Presbyterian	1.52%	1.63%
Other Christian	5.22%	5.51%
Jewish	0.37%	0.73%
Eastern	0.11%	0.53%
Islam	1.64%	0.84%

BUT, take this with a big grain of salt.  I checked to see if the percentage of Muslims was greater than other Illinois towns.  First I checked Champaign, IL, ten miles from Mahomet. Champaign is the county seat and has 200,000 population.   It had exactly the same statistics. So these numbers mean nothing, really, for the Village of Mahomet.  I'm leaving them in here though as a reminder to folks, to double check things you find on the internet.


I couldn't help wondering what do people living in a place called Mahomet think of their town's name these days?  So, I googled, "discussion of name change Mahomet, Illinois."   I got the minutes of the Board of Trustees of the Village of Mahomet, July 28 2015.

A Mr. Thompson wanted to change the name.  Here's the full report from the minutes:

PUBLIC COMMENT: Mark Thompson, had distributed a document on the American Flag. Thompson had mentioned the gold braid on the Village’s American Flag at a previous meeting.
Thompson stated he had expected to come to the meeting a few months ago but due to the death of his mother-in-law he could not attend. He also mentioned he had come to what he thought was the Board meeting but was mixed up on the date and showed up on a Wednesday.
Thompson began to speak to the name of Mahomet. He stated the Village of Mahomet can mean only one and that is “The Village of Mohammed. [sic] He stated there is no other meaning. Thompson stated there are 14 Christian churches in this town and no Mosque. He stated Mahomet being named after the Prophet Mohammed was an apostasy.
Thompson referenced the 1st commandment that “there shall be no other gods before me”. He stated he believed it was a slap in God’s face by having a town named Mohammed. Thompson distributed a document called the Life of Mahomet and History of Islam to the Board and the press.
Thompson stated as a Christian he is deeply offended by the Village being named after a Muslim Prophet. He stated the Confederate flag has been banned because someone was offended and added that he is much more offended by our town being named Mahomet.
He stated the name can be changed. He asked what he would have to do to start the process. He asked if he brought a petition, how many signatures would it take to change the name. He asked if he should start a Go Fund Me campaign and take this nationally to see how many Americans are also offended.
Thompson stated that Muslims are killing Christians every 5 minutes in the world but the Muslims would tell you they are a people of peace, but there are a revolutionary group of Muslims and they should not be ignored. He stated having our town named Mahomet was not compatible with our constitution.
He stated just recently there have been shooting in America that can be traced back to radical Muslim thinking.
He stated he was not here to make a speech, but looking for an answer. He asked if they could answer this tonight.
Widener stated he believed Thompson would not receive an answer tonight but he has the right to pursue whatever he believes he needed to do.
Widener stated he did not know the answer to this question. Lynn asked Thompson if he understood how much money it would take to change the name. Lynn stated making a change like this through the mail system could cost millions of dollars.
Thompson stated as a Christian he is offended by the name and he would hope others are as well.
Thompson stated he understands it costs money but he hopes everyone understands that the name Mahomet. He added that he had mentioned a Go Fund Me campaign and believed it would be supported nationwide.
Thompson added that the word Mahomet appears on our water tower so that is what people see when they enter our town.
Thompson stated he was disappointed in the response from the Board. He stated he believed the right answer would have been to encourage Thompson to circulate a petition.
Attorney Evans asked Thompson his address. Thompson stated his address was xxxx N., Dewey, but added that his children went to school in Mahomet. Brown stated this Board’s jurisdiction was on for the corporate limits. He stated if Thompson wanted to collect signatures he would need to canvas both the Village and Township, but this Board’s concern would be with the residents inside the Village limits.

So apparently Mr. Thompson doesn't even live in the Village of Mahomet.  I suspect that he's someone the Trustees know and are polite to, but don't take seriously.

I couldn't find anything else on the name change, but I suspect it didn't get much further than this.

Given the anti-Muslim sentiments among some in the US today, I'm glad to see that there is a town named Mohamet and that it's not interested in changing its name.